End-cutting technologies relevant to waste fluorescent light treatment are technologies in which a glass tube and a nonferrous metal (aluminum) are mechanically or thermally treated to separate a base cap therefrom. Although such an end-cutting technology has high cutting efficiency and resource recovery rate, when the mechanical treatment is performed, a lot of fragments of glass may be generated, and it may be difficult to control mercury. Also, when the thermal treatment is performed, a large amount of mercury gas is evaporated due to its high use temperature, and thus there is high possibility of the mercury gas emission in air.
Meanwhile, a thermal treatment method of the above-described end-cutting technologies may be classified again into a gas burner end-cutting method and an electric heater end-cutting method.
First, the gas burner end-cutting method is a method in which a glass tube and a nonferrous metal are cut from each other by using flame of a burner, which is mainly being used in Europe. In this gas burner end-cutting method, although the flame has a very high temperature of about 2,000° C., the glass tube may be accurately cut and clearly separated. Thus, a glass material is less likely to be mixed with a fluorescent material to allow the fluorescent material to be easily recovered. However, the gas burner end-cutting method is extremely changed in cutting efficiency according to conditions in use such as a pressure of the burner and a gas amount. Also, the gas burner end-cutting method may not be applied to small or complicate fluorescent lights.
Next, the electric heater end-cutting method is a cutting method using a heating wire. In more detail, the electric heater end-cutting method is a method in which heat is primarily applied between a glass tube and a nonferrous metal by using the heating wire, and shock through a cooling temperature is secondarily applied to the heated portion by using a cooling wire. In this electric heater end-cutting method, since the glass portion is clearly separated, the glass may be less likely to be mixed with the fluorescent material to allow the fluorescent material to be easily recovered. However, there is high possibility of causing heating wire damage due to a structure in which the heating wire is directly in contact with the cutoff portion. As a result, the heating wire needs to be periodically replaced, and also the cutoff surface of the fluorescent light is deteriorated in quality.
Although there are a lot of end-cutting method-related prior arts such as Patent Registration No. 10-0224384 (Oct. 15, 1999), Patent Registration No. 10-0919863 (Oct. 5, 2009), Patent Registration No. 10-0931621 (Dec. 14, 2009), and Japan Patent Publication No. 2008-229499 (Oct. 2, 2008), since expensive mechanical devices are used in most of the prior arts, relatively much manufacturing and operating costs are required. Also, the devices are complicated to frequently cause mechanical defects, and thus a skilled worker is needed.
Therefore, this inventor of the present invention was concerned about the above-described various problems according to the related art to seek solutions so as to accurately cut the base cap of the waste fluorescent light and stably separate the fluorescent material existing in the fluorescent tube, thereby inventing the present invention.